P302Rivals Football - Chelsea FC
Hush money
by Famous, 02/12, 11:10

Obviously don't want to jump to conclusions without knowing the full facts, so hopefully there's a full investigation into what's happened here as there's a few things which seem strange from both sides:

Why has he gone to the club directly and not to the police?
Why has he accepted a payment?
Presumably he accepted the payment on the understanding he wouldn't pursue anything further?
Has he now committed an offence, i.e. blackmail?

Why would the club decide this is the best way to handle things?
What would they really hope to achieve by seemingly paying off his silence?
As you say, the regime when he approached them wouldn't be responsible for what happened decades ago, so they've just made things unecessarily difficult for themselves when they could have done the right thing, liaised with the police and cooperated as much as possible and in the likely event that no evidence would have emerged, they'd have come out clean (and if wrongdoing would have been discovered, nobody would have blamed the current regime for what had happened years before, they would have just praised them for reacting correctly now).

We know the Roman regime has made some baffling, naive and frankly stupid decisions on various matters over the years, but if what he's alleging is correct then surely this is the most serious of the lot and senior people will have to be held accountable. Surely Abramovich himself would have been aware of what had happened?

I think the timing's to do with the other abuse stories in the media, to be fair.